The Books that Louis Reads

One year ago, while Rita, John, and Louis were getting to know one another in China, I was in charge of posting updates to the blog. In honor of this anniversary, Rita asked me to write a blog entry of my own from an aunt’s perspective. I let her choose the topic.

It was the first time we were taking care of Louis for a whole evening. Rita and John were off at a wedding, and my mother and I were trying to encourage the inconsolable little boy to eat some dinner. The tears came pouring down, no end in sight. How long should we sit there? Should we give up on dinner and take him up to bed? We were ready to throw in the towel, when I had an idea.

That very day I had brought home a recording of some of the Frances books. I quickly ran to my bag, grabbed the CD, shoved it into the CD player in the kitchen, skipped to A Birthday for Frances (which I knew was a favorite), and turned the volume up as far as it would go so Louis would be able to hear it from the back porch where we were eating.

And Louis stopped crying. As he listened to the story he knew so well, he began to calm down and eat his dinner - or at least parts of it. While my mother valiantly picked out all the meat she could find in the bowl of slops (Louis wasn’t interested in anything else), we listened to the Frances stories over and over again. And I breathed a silent “thank you” to Russell Hoban for writing books that my nephew loved so much that just hearing them made him feel secure and happy.

I had hoped that books would be a huge part of Louis’s life - the same hope I have for all my nephews and nieces. One and a half years ago, at the shower we threw for Rita while she and John awaited their travel approval, my gift to my new nephew and his parents had been a bag full of books. And when I say “full,” I mean FULL.

Oh, and a stuffed Cat in the Hat.

What can I say? I’m a children’s librarian.

At the time, I was only focused on expanding Louis’s library in the hopes of making him as big a fan of books as possible. After all, it has been shown that having books in the house is one of the best ways to encourage reading. And, by George, my nephew was going to love to read!

Little did I realize just how much he would love to read or how much his reading would affect me.

The past year with Louis has been a learning experience in so many ways, many of which, for me at least, involve books.

I live in the house where Louis spends his days with his Grandma, so I often bring home books for them to read together. It is not as though we don’t have enough books in our house - many of our bookshelves are literally overflowing. But I love introducing books to Louis - books old and new, books that have just arrived in the library (lucky Louis gets to read them before anyone else!) and books that are so old they have been sitting in our back room, unseen, for years. Grandma and Louis read (or at least try) them all.

There are so many things Louis has taught me about children and books. But here are two big ones:

1. Children have their own ideas about what makes a good book. I’m pretty selective in the books I check out from the library, only bringing home the ones I think are worth reading or that Louis will enjoy. I’ll ask my mother later what Louis thought of the books. Did he like them? Sometimes the answer is “Yes.” Sometimes it is “No.” Why does Louis like some books and not others? I have no idea. But I have no doubt that he does have his reasons and that they are as good as my own reasons for preferring some books to others.

We children’s librarians can sometimes get caught up in analyzing books. We read a book and say, “Oh, that’s the best book I’ve ever read!” Or we read a book and declare that it has no merit whatsoever. But that’s just what we think as adult readers. It’s easy to forget that the critics who really matter are the children who actually read the books. And Louis reminds me of this daily.

Have I been wrong in not bringing home No, David! or Julius, the Baby of the World just because I don’t like them? Maybe. But Louis hasn’t complained yet. He seems pretty happy with the mountains of books we have available for him.

2. Classics are classics for a reason. The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs & Ham, Fox in Socks, Little Bear, Bread & Jam for Frances, Chicken Soup with Rice, The Berenstain Bears and the Big Red Kite, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Corduroy, Mouse Soup, Lentil, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Blueberries for Sal, Petunia, Frog & Toad are Friends, Babar and the Wully-Wully. One by one, Louis has met and fallen in love with these and so many other books and characters, the same books and characters that we loved when we were little and that countless children have been discovering and loving since they were first created.

There have certainly been newer books that he’s loved (Mercy Watson comes to mind), some of which are destined to become classics themselves someday. But these books have a staying power that is impossible to shake. There is an indescribable joy in watching a child discover a book that you loved when you were a child and in seeing a book you thought you knew so well in a whole new light. Once you’ve seen Louis strike his Zax pose, you’ll never be able to read that story in the same way again. Just listen to Louis quote from Frog & Toad, and you’ll find humor in lines that didn’t seem funny before. (Honestly, I never liked Frog & Toad, but Louis has converted me.) And, after listening to Grandpa read Chicken Soup with Rice to Louis ten times in a row, I will never be able to hear mention of that food without thinking of that book - and Louis.

What is it about these books that speaks to children generation after generation? How can a little boy in 2010 relate to stories about two amphibians that were written 40 years ago? How can he love a strange house-breaking cat in a red and white striped hat who was created by a cartoonist back in 1957? And why would he care about a little girl badger from the 1960s who likes to eat bread and jam? I can’t define it, but there is something about these books that speaks to children and that will continue to speak to children for years to come. Someday maybe Louis will be introducing these same books to his children, and then he will know the joy that I feel in seeing how much he loves these books - and books in general.

I am not sure this is what Rita had in mind when she asked me to blog about the books Louis reads. But the fact is that Louis reads so many books and his favorites change so quickly that I hesitate to focus on his current preferences. Right now he loves Frog & Toad, but in a few weeks (or days), he might have moved on to something else entirely. I am curious to see what his next literary discovery will be. And I can hardly wait to watch him meet other wonderful books and characters down the road. There’s a whole literary world waiting for him!

Now I just need to convince his parents to sign him up for his own library card...